While discussing the model, Doctor Guillotin and the executioner paid a visit one day to Doctor Louis. A stranger came into the room, who seemed greatly impressed with the invention, but disapproved of the shape of the axe, which was that of a crescent. He did not believe it would act properly upon all kinds of necks; “not on mine for instance,” said the objector, taking up pen and ink, and drawing an oblique edge instead of the half moon. Sanson, the expert, was consulted, and gave it as his opinion that the question should be tested by actual experience. When the machine was completed, it was taken to Bicêtre and set up for trial on three corpses in the presence of a numerous company, including that of a number of prisoners, who looked out from the windows above. The oblique knife edge was found to be by far the more effective, and that model was adopted for all time.
The most curious part of the story is, that the stranger who suggested the improvement in the axe was King Louis XVI, himself, a skilled locksmith and mechanic, having learned a trade after the manner of all royal children. His own neck within a few months’ time was to be subjected to the supreme test, which succeeded perfectly. I have no wish to deprive Doctor Guillotin of any credit that may attach to this invention, of questionable utility, except in simplifying the act of killing and minimising the pain inflicted upon the victim; but he was certainly not the first inventor of the manslaying apparatus with which his name is for ever associated.
Two centuries before the Revolution, an instrument very similar to the guillotine was in use in Scotland, and known there as the “Maiden.” James Douglas, Earl of Morton, died by it in Edinburgh in 1587, thus adding to the long list of inventors who paid the penalty of death by their own contrivance. The “Maiden” had been often used in Yorkshire for the summary execution of thieves taken in the act, and the best account of it extant is found in “Holinshed’s Chronicles,” which describes the custom prevailing in Halifax and the machine in use. He records the law or custom, that whosoever commits a felony or steals to the value of fourteen pence or halfpenny shall be beheaded in the market. “The engine wherewith the execution is done is a square block of wood which does ride up and down in a slot between two pieces of timber that are framed and set upright, of five yards in height. In the nether end of the sliding block is an axe keyed or fastened with an iron into the wood, which being drawn up to the top of the frame is there fastened by a wooden pin, to the centre of which a long rope is attached, that cometh down among the people, so that when an offender hath made his confession and hath laid his head over the nethernmost block, every man seizeth the rope to show his willingness that judgment should be executed, and pulling out the pin the axe is released to fall with such violence that had the neck below been that of a bull the head would be dissevered and roll away to a great distance.” If the theft had been that of any fourfooted beast the rope was to be fastened to it, so that when driven away it would extract the pin.